There are a number of events at St. Mary’s Church including bestselling writer Rowan Coleman who introduces her Bronte mysteries under the pen name of Bella Ellis on Saturday June 12 at 1pm. The series sees the Bronte sisters turn detectives before they become famous authors. (Sue Wilkinson)
1 Jane EyreBecause The Wife Upstairs was inspired by Jane Eyre, now is a good time to re-read this Charlotte Bronte classic. Jane Eyre may have a plain appearance, but she is filled with spirit, wit, and courage despite her upbringing by her cruel aunt, Mrs. Reed. When she becomes the governess to the daughter of the mysterious Mr. Rochester at Thornfield, she secretly falls in love. But when a mysterious fire starts and a man shows up claiming to be the brother of Mr. Rochester's first wife, Jane realises things aren't exactly what they seem. (Sydni Ellis)
ADLER BY LAVIE TIDHAR AND PAUL MCCAFFREYCan’t get enough of Irene Adler? Think The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would be better with women? Try Adler, in which the opera singer-turned-adventuress teams up with other fictional women — Lady Havisham! Jane Eyre! — as well as real historical figures — Marie Curie! Queen Victoria! — to protect the British Empire from an angry African queen and a vampiric assassin. (Eileen Gonzalez)
Her willingness to embrace female nuance and unlikeability makes her part of a new generation of talent buoyed by Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, Michaela Coel’s unjustly Golden Globe ignored I May Destroy You, and Lucy Prebble and Billie Piper’s compelling I Hate Suzie. While books are full of women who frighten and fascinate (Fennell counts the Brontes, Patricia Highsmith and Hilary Mantel among favourites), screen depictions often feel far flatter, she thinks, because physical appearance supercedes attention to detail. “These kind of weird old ladies or pervs or voyeurs” are absent; “We don’t see female losers at all.” (Hannah Betts)
Shirley – who was named after Charlotte Brontë’s eponymous “gallant little cavalier”, a champion of social justice – was born in Chelsea, London, the second child of the political scientist George Catlin and the pacifist author Vera Brittain. The pattern of her life and many of its defining influences owed much to the legacy of their unusual and curious parenting. (Julia Langdon)
Do you know someone with excellent customer service and communication skills who would relish the opportunity to work in a unique heritage setting? We're looking for Visitor Experience Assistants to join our team. Take a look: https://t.co/WQfDaovtbY #Haworth
— Brontë Parsonage (@BronteParsonage) April 12, 2021
Alexis EasleyEdinburgh University PressISBN: 9781474475921This book highlights the integral relationship between the rise of the popular woman writer and the expansion and diversification of newspaper, book and periodical print media during a period of unprecedented change, 1832–1860. It includes discussions of canonical women writers such as Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, as well as lesser-known figures such as Eliza Cook and Frances Brown. It also examines the ways in which women readers actively responded to a robust popular print culture by creating scrapbooks and engaging in forms of celebrity worship. At the same time, it demonstrates how Victorian women’s participation in popular print culture anticipates our own engagement with new media in the twenty-first century.
Brontë fans from across the globe are backing a campaign to save fields near their birthplace from the bulldozers, as a housing plan threatens a historic landscape linked to the famous sisters.Academics and Brontë-ites from as far afield as Pennsylvania have objected to Bradford Council's plan for housing in Thornton - where the siblings were born - according to a West Yorkshire writer leading the fight.Michael Stewart, who set up the Brontë Stones walk from Thornton to Haworth, says building on the site will wreck the atmospheric route and could kill off a burgeoning tourist trade.However, a spokesperson for Bradford Council said the plans are not on Green Belt land and officers are scrutinising the blueprints.Dr Stewart, who teaches at the University of Huddersfield, said: "Out of Thornton, the first encounter with a rural landscape is at this site."You are suddenly met with a panoramic view of the valley and you can see the moors in the distance - it's spectacular."The draft Local Plan, which is currently being drawn up by Bradford Council, would see 150 homes built on the Thornton site.That would mean give walkers a view of a housing estate and the backs of homes - instead of panoramic views of the countryside.It could deter some of the hundreds of walkers and Brontë fans who are attracted to the walk - and mean the area would miss out on the money they spend in hotels, restaurants, cafes and other attractions.Dr Stewart estimates that 10,000 people have already walked the Brontë Stones Way since it was set up three years ago.The route passes artwork carved into stone that commemorating all three sisters - from artists and writers including Kate Bush and former poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy.Dr Stewart is warning that the housing plan could hit the area economically as well as harming the cultural heritage.Another walk called the Brontë Way is rarely walked anymore, he said, because housing development means the first 15 miles of the Oakwall Hall to Burnley route now go through new estates.Building on the Thornton site - known as TH2/H in the draft plan - would kill off the Brontë Stones walk in the same way - and see Bradford district loses the tourist trade which is growing up around Brontë birthplace.A consultation period on site allocated for housing closed last March, but Dr Stewart is still urging people to write to the city council planning department to object. (Victoria Prest)
Biography is a problematical genre. Nearly all human life is there. Supermarkets sell in breathtaking numbers the lives of celebrities, television personalities and sports stars; bookshops heave with volumes about those less trivial, but with less popular appeal – politicians, warriors, philosophers and literary figures. A successful literary biographer needs a command of style and narrative commensurate with that of his or her subject, to retain the reader’s confidence. As a result, a list of the great biographies is dominated by those of great writers – Boswell’s Johnson, Forster’s Dickens, Froude’s Carlyle, Mrs Gaskell’s Charlotte Brontë and, in more recent times, George Painter’s stunning life of Proust or Michael Holroyd’s Shaw. (Simon Heffer)
How to Live. What To Do.Jane Eyre is used, presumably, in the Childhood: Schooling chapter.
In search of ourselves in life and literature
Josh Cohen
Ebury Press
ISBN: 9781785039799
2021
From the truths and lies we tell about ourselves to the resonant creations of fiction, stories give shape and meaning to all our lives. Both a practicing psychoanalyst and a professor of literature, Josh Cohen
has long been taken with the mutual echoes between the life struggles of the consulting room and the dramas of the novel. So what might the most memorable characters in literature tell us about how to live meaningfully?
In How to Live. What to Do, Cohen plots a course through the various stages of our lives, discovering in each the surprising and profound insights literature has to offer. Beginning with the playful mindset of Wonderland's Alice, we discover the resilience of Jane Eyre, the rebellious rage of Baldwin's Johnny Grimes and the catastrophic ambitions of Jay Gatsby, the turbulence of first love for Sally Rooney's Frances, the sorrows of marriage for Middlemarch's Dorothea Brooke, and the regrets and comforts of middle age for Rabbit Angstrom.
[Lavie] Tildhar places the action in 1902 London, so a number of characters have to be updated from their 19th century origins to fit the new era. For example, our narrator (and reader POV) is Jane Eyre — but she is no longer the independent-minded governess she was in her eponymous 1847 novel, but instead an even more capable character, a former battlefield medic who served in the Boer War. (Andrew A. Smith)
The first book you remember?It was Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, I read it as a girl and it always stayed with me.
She was offered every role going and turned down plenty of prominent parts, including the lead in Elizabeth, which ended up going to Cate Blanchett, and Amélie, which had been specially written for her but eventually was taken by Audrey Tautou. ‘Amélie was at a time in my life when I’d been away a lot; I needed to be at home more, and, anyway, the film was in French, which I don’t speak, and I’d seen Juliette Binoche [speaking English badly] in Wuthering Heights and thought “Hmm, no!”’ (Julia Llewellyn Smith)
On the “Masterpiece” website, “World on Fire” creator Peter Bowker offered this teaser for the second season: “Kasia and Lois will meet, and the fallout from that, I think for everybody, will be interesting and fascinating. Season 2 will start, historically, with the blitz in the Northwest of England. And North Africa will be very much the field of battle. We’ll find out more about Webster’s family history. Nancy will finally have to leave Berlin near the start of the series, for crossing a line, and we will also find out more about Nancy. And she will carry on. She will definitely be in the Soviet Union for some of it. So yeah, that’s the shape it’s taking. And Lois, of course, trapped in a rather Brontë-esque, loveless marriage with Vernon.” (Rich Heldenfels)
Hornsea highlights from its famous pottery to award-winning beach visited by Charlotte Brontë (...)Even the author Charlotte Brontë was among those who visited and one of the highlights of the summer season was the third week in July, when horse racing took place on the beach. (Lucy Oates)
Emma Clayton in The Telegraph & Argus checks out some travel programmes on TV:
Susan Calman’s Grand Days Out also ticked off Yorkshire...Malham Cove and Whitby along with, yep, Brontë Country, where the comic mimed to Wuthering Heights on a wiley, windy moor. Natch.
That song had her in tears. As a new parent she explained she had a bad case of “mum brain” brought on by sleep deprivation. Having not sung in public in more than a year, she also felt “nervous and rusty”. But the self-deprecating patter failed to take the edge off a searing hour that registered somewhere between Tori Amos, Anne Rice and the Brontë sisters. (Ed Power)
Now at the end of the week I still feel reluctant to get out of bed and shower. I haven't read reviews, and I'm just hoping it's not absolutely awful. I try to dismiss thoughts like "Why the hell did you think you could write a book?" and I've stopped wearing the wig, false nose, and fake moustache when I ‘go down the New World' to get more wasabi pea crisps and Whittaker’s white chocolate, but I certainly don't feel like Emily Brontë, Katherine Mansfield or JK Rowling. Though perhaps Emily, Katherine, JK, JRR, AND Michelle Obama also isolated in their rooms eating all manner of weird snacks when their first books came out.
From the myth of the Greek sorceress Circe, who can turn men into swine, and her Indian equivalent Surpanakha, who can turn herself into various forms to lure Laxman into her trap, to the likes of ‘Jane Eyre,’ women have often been portrayed as erratic, violent, and hysteric creatures who stand outside the rational realm of men to attain mysterious, almost mythical proportions.The Arts Desk reviews the film Sequin in a blue room:
At school, Sequin sends texts from under the table while his English teacher invokes Wuthering Heights and rabbits on about obsession, transgression and that remote-seeming word, love. (Matt Wolf)
Quando avevo 17 anni il mio professore di italiano, nell’andare in pensione, mi regalò una copia di Jane Eyre. Pensai che fosse un bel gesto, ma che quel libro non c’entrasse nulla con me, figlia del grunge e della periferia, cosa potevo mai condividere con una delle solite orfane infelici e sfortunate che al massimo potevano realizzarsi con un buon matrimonio, di cui era piena la letteratura? Invece divorai quel libro, con una fame che cresceva a ogni pagina, completamente assorbita da quella ragazza, dalla sua forza, dal suo viaggio senza ritorno verso una meta che era la stessa identica cui tendevo anch’io. La scoperta di se stessi, dell’autenticità e del mistero di ciò che sta sotto le aspettative. Il mio professore sapeva fare il suo lavoro e aveva scelto il libro giusto, conosceva la potenza di quella letteratura che abbiamo incasellato nella definizione di “romanzi di formazione”. (Letizia Giangualano) (Translation)
Victoria Hoyos: Si tuviera que escoger un personaje de ficción de alguna novela para sentarse a charlar un rato, ¿a quién elegiría?Cada libro que uno lee es una conversación en diferido. Ahora estoy releyendo Cumbres borrascosas de Emily Brontë y no sabría con quién quedarme. En todo caso, el espíritu de esta autora está ahí en cada frase, al alcance de mi mano. Ella dice y yo subrayo.(Translation)
Pero si El perro de los Baskerville nos parece la novela más importante de Holmes es por su localización. Doyle prefería los ambientes orientales, y confinó durante muchos relatos a Sherlock en Londres, pero soltar al detective en los tétricos escenarios de las hermanas Brontë fue un acierto extremo, las tierras del norte, sus desoladores páramos trabajan a favor de la trama. (Gonzalo Torné) (Translation)
Acessa (Brazil) lists 'best-selling books' including Wuthering Heights. La Nación (Argentina) mentions the Phil Lord & Chris Miller 1998 Brontë Sisters Power Dolls commercial. Vårt Land (Norway) publishes a quiz which includes a Brontë sisters question. The Well Read List reviews Wuthering Heights.
Mar 30, 2021A remarkable Pocket Poets anthology of poems from around the world and across the centuries about illness and healing, both physical and spiritual.From ancient Greece and Rome up to the present moment, poets have responded with sensitivity and insight to the troubles of the human body and mind. Poems of Healing gathers a treasury of such poems, tracing the many possible journeys of physical and spiritual illness, injury, and recovery, from John Donne’s “Hymne to God My God, In My Sicknesse” and Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul has Bandaged moments” to Eavan Boland’s “Anorexic,” from W.H. Auden’s “Miss Gee” to Lucille Clifton’s “Cancer,” and from D.H. Lawrence’s “The Ship of Death” to Rafael Campo’s “Antidote” and Seamus Heaney’s “Miracle.” Here are poems from around the world, by Sappho, Milton, Baudelaire, Longfellow, Cavafy, and Omar Khayyam; by Stevens, Lowell, and Plath; by Zbigniew Herbert, Louise Bogan, Yehuda Amichai, Mark Strand, and Natalia Toledo. Messages of hope in the midst of pain—in such moving poems as Adam Zagajewski’s “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” George Herbert’s “The Flower,” Wisława Szymborska’s “The End and the Beginning,” Gwendolyn Brooks’ “when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story” and Stevie Smith’s “Away, Melancholy”—make this the perfect gift to accompany anyone on a journey of healing.
The 19th century clock was part of the evening ritual for the father of Britain’s most famous literary family, as he would stop religiously every evening to wind it up on the stroke of 9pm as he made his way upstairs to bed.And the 6ft tall timepiece, which was made by Barraclough of Haworth, has taken on an added resonance in the museum that is now housed in the former Brontë family home.It has just been returned to the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth after being restored, an annual task that was abandoned last year as the first lockdown was imposed.The clock remained silent throughout the intervening 12 months, but it is now back on the staircase after being cleaned and conserved, its distinctive ticking resonating around the museum.For the Parsonage’s chief curator, Ann Dinsdale, it is a moment that signifies a renewed hope for the future as the museum’s staff and volunteers prepare to re-open to the public next month.She told The Yorkshire Post: “The Parsonage has been eerily quiet for so long now, but to have the clock back and ticking again is wonderful. It really is a big moment for us all, as it is symbolic that the museum is about to re-open to the public again.”The work was carried out by David Barker, a fellow of the British Horological Institute and one of only a handful of accredited clock conservators in Britain.He said: “I have been working on the Parsonage’s clocks for 30 years, and I have enjoyed connecting with them again. It is nice to know that the clock is back where it should be, and working again.”The Parsonage is set to welcome back its first visitors again on May 19, and anyone passing through the entrance will be given unprecedented access to witness some of the 7,000 artefacts which are in the museum’s collection.Visitor numbers will be limited to just six people every 15 minutes, meaning that the venue will be free of the crowds who normally pack into its corridors and rooms. [...]Ms Dinsdale said: “We obviously want people to be able to enjoy the Parsonage safely, so that means people will be able to see the exhibits on show in a manner which is definitely a break from the norm.“It really will be a special time for anyone coming to visit, and we are just so glad to be able to welcome people back once again.”Among the highlights once the museum re-opens will be the exhibition marking the bicentenary of Anne Brontë’s birth, which has been extended into this year after the Parsonage was forced to close in 2020.Among the other artefacts on display will be five of the six “little books” which were written by Charlotte Brontë when she was aged just 14. (Paul Jeeves)
Our team of volunteer gardeners have been hard at work for the past year, coming in when they've been able to do so safely to maintain the Parsonage garden. We think they're absolute stars - here are some pics of the beautiful blooms we're able to enjoy due to their hard work! pic.twitter.com/yuyaj6YlFx
— Brontë Parsonage (@BronteParsonage) April 9, 2021
During my daughter’s early years, one of my greatest escapes was (as it has always been) reading fiction. But the more I read, the more I wondered why the intensity of motherhood, and in particular single motherhood, had not been treated as a worthy literary subject by many writers.James Joyce wrote a book about a guy just walking around Dublin. Why had no one ever done the interior monologue of a woman sitting through a mother’s group? Emily Brontë wrote the compelling tale of Heathcliff’s rage, but why had no writer ever attempted the same for a toddler? Why were there so few books about the minutiae of mothering? (Jacqueline Maley)
“Jane Eyre—she’s a confident, virtuous woman who stands true to her morals and convictions despite the pressures around her and finds love so much greater because of it.”– Christina, Denver, Colorado
I sense deixar Twitter, els hashtag #Sanditon i #SaveSanditon concentren un munt d’aficionats arreu del món de la sèrie de la BBC que es pot veure a Filmin. Com que una temporada es fa curta, i sense concreció d’una segona, els fans tornen a veure els capítols i els comenten en temps real de vegades fins i tot comentant la novel·la en què està inspirada la sèrie, ‘Sanditon’ de Jane Eyre. L’obra inacabada de la mítica novel·lista, que ha publicat Alba, té un inesperat i àvid focus d’atenció. (Carol Álvarez) (Translation)
Horror in the Age of Steam
Tales of Terror in the Victorian Age of Transitions
By Carroll Clayton SavantRoutledgeISBN 9780367858582March 2021Change is terrifying, and rapid change, within a small amount of time, is destabilizing to any culture. England, under the tutelage of Queen Victoria, witnessed precipitous change the likes of which it had not encountered in generations. Wholesale swaths of the economy and the social structure underwent complete recalibration, through the hands of economic progress, industrial innovation, scientific discovery, and social cohesiveness. Faced with such change, Britons had to redefine the concept of work, belief, and even what it meant to be English. Victorians relied on many methods to attempt to release the steam from the anxieties incurred through change, and one of those methods was the horror story of everyday existence during an age of transition. This book is a study of how authors Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Brontë, and Anne Brontë turned to horrifying representations of everyday reality to illustrate the psychological-traumatic terrors of an age of transition.
Chapter Three: Greeks, Freaks, and Raving Lunatics: The Monstrous World of Science in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering HeightsChapter Four: Hysterical Angels and Loud-Mouthed Hussies: Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and the Transformation of Gendered Voices in Victorian England
Now Haworth, Cross Roads and Stanbury Parish Council have submitted an application to install a new notice board, which will hold a map of key attractions in the village, at the bottom of Main Street.The Council's application says it could be the first in a number of tourist maps installed at key sites in Haworth. [...]The Parish Council's application says: "As a result of the closure of the Tourist Information Centre there has been a concern that visitors required information located at specific locations in the form of a map to identify places of interest."The Parish Council believes this village map board will have positive benefits in promoting tourism in the area."Hopefully this will be the first map board to be placed at strategic locations across the village."If the application is approved, the first sign will be installed near an existing heritage sign outside the Old Hall Hotel.A decision on the application is expected next month. (Chris Young)
one of the few prequels that has lived up to the genius of the book that inspired it. (Jane Sullivan)
The Eyre Affair by Jasper FfordeIn an alternate Great Britain, futuristic technologies like cloning and time travel are everyday commodities. When the conniving Acheron Hades seeks to erase Jane Eyre (yes, the Jane Eyre) from history, detective Thursday Next is assigned to the case. As she dodges time-space-sucking black holes and reckons with all sorts of anachronistic nightmares, Thursday is the literary world’s only hope of bringing justice to Jane Eyre and Charlotte Brontë’s poor manuscript. (CJ Connor)
He also has an Englishman’s innate understanding that things will invariably go wrong. In 1970 Fairport played the Yorkshire Folk, Jazz and Blues Festival, an attempt at a British Woodstock that ended up as a hippy Wuthering Heights, with howling gales and its forlorn promoter going mad and spending two weeks wandering the Yorkshire moors. (Will Hodgkinson)
The debut director and co-writer Samuel van Grinsven displays a deft comedic touch with the classroom scenes (teacher droning on about Heathcliff and Victorian romance while Sequin sexts potential conquests) and with Sequin’s awkward exchanges with his blokey, matey father (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor). (Kevin Maher)
To celebrate the 251st Birth Anniversary of William Wordsworth and the 201st Birth Anniversary of Anne Brontë, a special talk by Dr. R. Purnima, Director of Children’s Literary Club, and formerly Professor of English, KSOU, is organised at 5.30 pm on Apr. 9. This event will be held at Chamundi Children’s Home, II Stage Brindavan Extension, Mysuru. For details contact Mob: 96323-15924.
Originally staged at the Erie Playhouse in 1998, Jane Eyre is a compe
lling and entertaining musical version of the Bronte classic, featuring a book, music, and lyrics written by Erie's own David Matthews, Charlie Corritore, and Michael Malthaner, that will soar into the hearts and minds of the audience!Join us as we enjoy this premiere from the Playhouse past, available for streaming VIDEO-ON-DEMAND, April 9-18.
Apr. 9-17 2021 · 12:00 am
Apr. 18, 2021 · 11:30 pm
The Brontë Parsonage Museum in West Yorkshire has been getting ready to partially re-open next week as lockdown restrictions continue to ease.The home of the sisters who wrote some of the greatest English novels has been closed for most of the last year, with the shop finally being allowed to re-open next week.The museum is hoping to re-open fully in May after being kept afloat by donations from the public.Ann Dinsdale, who has worked at the museum for 32 years, said: "There's been nothing to compare with this in my experience."It's been quite devastating really. The parsonage was kept open all through the Second World War so to have to shut was really like a huge momentous thing and there was always that worry that we might never reopen." [...]Rebecca Yorke, from the museum, said: "We managed to open last September and October and we organised a timed ticketing system where people booked their tickets in advance and we limit it to six people every 15 minutes, that means we can control numbers and people can have a really safe welcoming experience."Visitors really benefit from that because they have what would normally be a very busy house practically to themselves as they go through, so that's a win-win situation." (Jon Hill)
If you're looking for somewhere beautiful to visit after lockdown, you'd do well to consider picturesque Haworth during a staycation to Yorkshire this summer.Strolling around the village of Haworth in the Airedale Valley is like stepping into another era. It’s got a buzzy high street with tea rooms, pubs and craft shops, and steep cobbled alleys which you can climb for never-ending views of the beautiful moorland all around.You’ll also sense its proud literary heritage in the town’s storied streets - a certain local family’s name is everywhere, with landmarks, museums and natural sights named after its most famous residents. [...]The history of the Brontë family can be traced in Haworth’s world-famous Brontë Parsonage Museum, where you’ll find 19-century furniture, clothing and the sisters’ own personal possessions.Following the path from the Parsonage Museum, you’ll reach the rugged moors where so much of their writing was set in a few minutes. This dramatic landscape was the backdrop to Catherine and Heathcliffe’s [sic] love affair in the legendary Wuthering Heights, which you should wrap up warm and relive!Marrying the town’s two golden treasures - the Brontës and country walks - is the Brontë Trail, which takes you across the moors from Haworth to the lovely Brontë Waterfall in just 45 minutes. (Rebecca Wilson)
The pipistrelles were discovered in the roof of the Grade II listed South Square Centre in Thornton, near Bradford, during the arts centre's restoration in 2020, close to where the three literary sisters were born.Now the bats have a replica of the Brontës' birthplace as a bat box."It was never going to be 'just a box'," the arts centre said. [...]The arts centre asked heritage assistant Chloe Moreton to design the box - a replica of the Brontës' birthplace on Market Street in Thornton, a few minutes walk from the Grade II listed arts centre on South Square. [...]Yvonne Carmichael is director of the arts centre, a collection of 19th Century Grade II workers' cottages in Thornton, five miles (8km) from Bradford.She said: "We do a lot of work around the Brontë family, so it was only right that we named our bats after the three remarkable sisters."
The Women’s prize for fiction has issued a strongly worded statement saying that it “deplores any attempts to malign or bully” authors nominated for the prize, after trans novelist Torrey Peters was targeted in an open letter.The US writer, who is nominated for the £30,000 award for her debut novel Detransition, Baby, was the subject of a letter published online on Tuesday by the Wild Women Writing Club. The letter, which is signed by several dead women writers including Emily Dickinson and Daphne du Maurier, claims that some signatories were using pseudonyms “because of the threat of harassment by trans extremists and/or cancellation by the book industry”.The signatories argue that the decision to longlist Peters for the Women’s prize, founded 25 years ago in the aftermath of an all-male Booker shortlist, “communicates powerfully that women authors are unworthy of our own prize, and that it is fine to allow male people to appropriate our honours … the moment you decided that a male author was eligible, the award ceased to be the Women’s prize and became simply the Fiction prize.” [...]Others made light of the pseudonyms on the letter; author Melinda Salisbury wrote: “Just bought a new book! It’s called Detransition, Baby, It was recommended by my good friend, Emily Brontë. She’s a big fan.” Author Joanne Harris wrote, “If you’re expecting me to believe that you’re not secretly ashamed of your opinions, or embarrassed by your allies, then maybe don’t hide behind a dead person’s identity whilst simultaneously trying to strip someone living of theirs.” (Sian Cain)
Among the signatories are Emily Dickinson, who died in 1886; Daphne DuMaurier, who died in 1989; Willa Cather, who died in 1947; and Currar [sic] Bell, the pseudonym of Emily Bronte [SIC] who died in 1855. (Lily Wakefield)
El libro, hacia su giro final, toma tintes de novela de terror, ¿cuál diría que es el elemento que la lleva a ese punto? ¿Únicamente la imaginación de Claudia hija?Siempre quise escribir una novela gótica. En la adolescencia me fascinaron Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë, y Rebeca, de Daphne Du Maurier, que son novelas góticas. Además, vengo de una tradición en la que el gótico tropical tuvo bastante fuerza: Andrés Caicedo en Noche sin fortuna y algunos cuentos y Carlos Mayolo en el cine. (Laura López) (Translation)
Speaking about the proposal, Colin Parr, Kirklees Council’s strategic director for environment and climate change, said: “The proposal detailed in the report will allow the council to retain the property in public ownership without incurring huge operating costs.“We have looked at the example set by the National Trust and the Landmark Trust, who both renovate heritage buildings to let as holiday cottages as a way of sustaining them, and we are confident that this could be a business model that works for the council too.“As well as its broad appeal, we think this scheme will benefit tourism to the area by attracting people who are interested in the Brontë connection to Red House, and the prospect of staying in a house where Charlotte frequently visited and wrote about.“At the same time, we hope that the proposal will make it possible to offer managed community access to a site which we know is much-loved by local people.”A spokesperson for the Red House Yorkshire Heritage Trust said: “We are aware that Kirklees Council has published their proposal to make a significant investment into the Red House site. Their vision is for both the main house and cart shed to be refurbished and re-opened as quality short-term holiday stays.“Our group’s priority remains that this important heritage site is respected and protected in public or community hands.“We recognise that for this to happen, there must be an appropriate, sympathetic and financially viable use for the site, so while we certainly welcome the investment, we remain open-minded about the council’s new approach.“From conversations we have had with the council, we are pleased that they recognise that our views on the future of Red House are important.“We have been assured that although this proposal does have a commercial focus, there is a commitment to ensuring our local community can also access the site over a number of open weekends and specially-curated events throughout the year which pay homage to its outstanding heritage credentials.“The council have also assured us that as the barn will not be a part of the new commercial activity there could be scope for community and heritage activities to be based there in the future.“We look forward to being consulted as the project progresses and to celebrating the heritage of the site and facilitating access for the benefit of the local and wider community.”
University of South Carolina. Department of Theatre and Dance presents
You on the Moors Now
April 9-17, 2021
Written by Jaclyn Backhaus
Directed by Ibi Owolabi
Drayton Hall Theatre
Freeing four iconic fictional heroines from the social confines of their 19th century novels, Jaclyn Backhaus’ rip-roaring You on the Moors Now brings a fiercely modern sensibility to antiquated ideas of love and romance. Rather than waiting for their fates to be decided by marriage proposals, Jane (Jane Eyre), Jo (Little Women), Elizabeth (Pride and Prejudice) and Cathy (Wuthering Heights) band together to reject their famous suitors, leading to a literal battle of the sexes.
Further information on Columbia Star,
Campaigners who fought to save Gomersal’s historic Red House say they are “open-minded” about a decision to turn it into a short-term holiday destination and intimate wedding venue.The former Red House Museum, which has connections to Charlotte Brontë, was closed by Kirklees Council in 2016 as part of a reaction to Government austerity cuts.There then followed a lengthy campaign by the Red House Heritage Group to take on the site and develop it as a heritage resource.The council turned down three asset transfer requests and announced in September 2019 that the building and grounds were to be put on the market.The Red House Heritage Group wanted the site turned over to them.Last week the council revealed that the Grade II* listed 19th century manor house to be comprehensively refurbished to become a five-star high-end luxury holiday home for commercial holiday letting.There will also be a room for weddings.Reacting to the news, Red House Heritage Group said its priority remains that the site “is respected and protected in public or community hands”.A spokeswomen said: “We recognise that for this to happen, there must be an appropriate, sympathetic and financially viable use for the site, so while we certainly welcome the investment, we remain open-minded about the council’s new approach.”As well as the main house the site’s cart shed will be remodelled and refitted to provide four individual self-contained holiday apartments.The barn is not included in the commercial proposal and remains a community asset.The group, which has been granted charitable status and will now be known as Red House Yorkshire Heritage Trust, said it has been assured that there is a commitment to ensuring the local community can also access Red House over a number of open weekends and specially-curated events throughout the year, “which pay homage to its outstanding heritage credentials”.The group added: “The council have also assured us that as the barn will not be a part of the new commercial activity there could be scope for community and heritage activities to be based there in the future.”With its connections to Charlotte Brontë , who stayed at Red House and renamed it ‘Briarmains’ in her 1849 novel Shirley, the site is expected to have broad appeal.Red House Museum, which explained the history of Gomersal’s intrepid feminist and author, Mary Taylor, and her friendship with Charlotte Brontë, was one of two venues closed by Kirklees Council in December 2016 amid budget cuts. (Tony Earnshaw)
Charlotte Brontë became the subject of literary London gossip when she dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre to William Makepeace Thackeray, by way of a thank you for his enthusiastic review. Readers saw unintended parallels between Mr Rochester and Thackeray, whose own wife was insane… (Lizzie Enfield)
“Jane Eyre” (1847)Long before she sets foot in Thornfield Hall, a young Jane Eyre lives through an outbreak of tuberculosis at Lowood Institution. Jane remains healthy, despite the aunt who sent her to Lowood hoping Jane would die from the contagion. Tuberculosis does claim the life Jane’s best friend, Helen Burns, just as it did the lives of Charlotte Brontë’s sisters, Elizabeth and Maria. They died in 1825 after being sent to the Clergy’s Daughters’ School. (Laura Hale Brockway)
The books in order are “Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse,” “Goth Girl and the Fete Worse than Death,” “Goth Girl and the Pirate Queen,” and my favorite, “Goth Girl and the Wuthering Fright.” Set in the late 1700s, Ada prepares to compete in the Literary Dog Show hosted by her father at the estate. With her best friend visiting on Christmas break, Ada has high hopes for the visit and the competition. Tomfoolery is afoot, however, when one of the entrants conspires to cheat. Part Steam Punk, part Goth, and part the England of Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, and the Brontë sisters, these little books complete with footnotes will delight children whose humor tends toward puns and riddles. Riddell’s enchanting illustrations highlight the atmosphere of the books and their eccentric characters. (Melony Carey)
Doyle prefería los ambientes orientales, y confinó durante muchos relatos a Sherlock en Londres, pero soltar al detective en los tétricos escenarios de las hermanas Brontë fue un acierto extremo, las tierras del norte, sus desoladores páramos trabajan a favor de la trama. Por encima del crimen el auténtico rival de Holmes es el ambiente: atávico, supersticioso, recorrido por vientos como premoniciones de espectros, paciente hasta la crueldad... Doyle parece complacerse en enviar primero a Watson y después a Holmes a que pongan orden en el mundo de Cumbres borrascosas, una atmósfera, un paisaje y una densidad moral capaces de mellar la confianza del detective en el orden lógico donde se sustenta (al menos en el orden de la ficción) su brillante juego de inducciones y deducciones. La novela amenaza con algo mucho más terrible que vencer a Holmes: destrozar el propio juego. Pero Doyle no fue tan lejos, por momentos enhebra la aguja, pero enseguida pierde el hilo; la novela oculta en su interior un profundo y sugestivo conflicto que no llega a encarar. (Gonzalo Torné) (Translation)
What book did you most enjoy in school?The book I liked the most in school was Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. I was blown away by the alternate take on Jane Eyre from the perspective of Rochester’s first wife and without giving too much away, it’s a short novel about colonization, relationships, and mental illness that I’ll never forget. [...]Name a book you’ve pretended to have read.I never made it all the way through Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and skipped through the book for school. I’ve tried a few times to get through the entire thing but the characters that fascinated me the most got the least amount of development and so I read other books like Wide Sargasso Sea to fill in those gaps and never quite made it back to Jane Eyre. I made sure to get the Cliff Notes for school projects and managed to pass any classes that covered it but haven’t actually read it. I’ll keep trying!
Ok, it's just a silly pun in the title, but it's nice anyway. The latest instalment of the Dog Man series has a Brontë-ish title:Dog Man #10: Mothering Heights
By Dav PilkeyIllustrator Dav Pilkey
Scholastic Inc.ISBN13: 9781338680454The 10th Dog Man adventure from the worldwide bestselling author and artist Dav Pilkey. You'll howl with laughter!Dav Pilkey's wildly popular Dog Man series appeals t
o readers of all ages and explores universally positive themes, including empathy, kindness, persistence, and the importance of doing good.
The Argus-Courier loves this kind of jokes:
One of the smartest things about this series has been the cool literary shout-outs to classic novels embedded in the books’ titles, which often inform the plots of Pilkey’s off-the-wall stories. “Mothering Heights” is an obvious homage to Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” of course, but it’s just the latest in a string of similarly spoofy titles. (David Templeton)
The Red House in Gomersal was a museum, but Kirklees Council is to consider a £600,000 project to give the premises a new lease of life.Proposals for the “ground-breaking” £600,000 project are set to come before Kirklees Council’s decision-making cabinet later this month (April 13).They include “comprehensive refurbishment and some sympathetic remodelling” of the Grade II* listed 19th century manor house to become a five-star high-end luxury holiday home for commercial holiday letting, accommodating 10 people within five bedrooms to be let as a single holiday cottage unit.The site’s cart shed will be remodelled and refitted to provide four individual self-contained holiday apartments, each accommodating two people, available to book either individually or in addition to the main house.The barn is not included in the commercial proposal and remains a community asset.Revenue generated from holiday stays is expected to be sufficient to cover the costs of operating the site and to enable a series of planned open days/weekends ensuring community access to the site for planned and curated activities and events. There will also be a room for weddings.The handover could be as soon as March 2022 with the house open for holiday stays in April.However the site will not be completely devoted to commercial hires. Community access to the house and gardens will be offered over a series of managed and curated events and open days thus allowing the public to enjoy the house and grounds.With its connections to Charlotte Brontë, who stayed at Red House and renamed it ‘Briarmains’ in her 1849 novel Shirley, the site is expected to have broad appeal.Red House Museum, which explained the history of Gomersal’s intrepid feminist and author, Mary Taylor and her friendship with Charlotte Brontë, was one of two venues closed by Kirklees Council in December 2016 amid budget cuts.The council turned down three asset transfer requests and announced in September 2019 that the building and grounds were to be put on the market.Campaigners with the Red House Heritage Group wanted the site turned over to them.Senior Labour councillor Graham Turner described the move as “ground-breaking”.He added: “This project will not only help stimulate the local economy but will ensure that this historic building is retained as a publicly-owned building.“We have never tried this type of project before, but I have every confidence that this will be a great success and could lead the way to other exciting commercial ventures that can protect some of our historic assets.”The holiday home plan has also received the backing of local councillors David Hall, Lisa Holmes and Michelle Grainger-Mead who referred to Red House as “the heritage jewel in Gomersal’s crown”.They said: “Without a doubt, the key to saving Red House for our community is finding a suitable use for the site, one which means it can pay for its own upkeep.“Given its huge potential appeal to Brontë enthusiasts visiting the wider area, we agree that allowing tourists to holiday here could not only be the key to a financially sustainable future for Red House, but also trigger a wider tourism boost for other local businesses too.” (Tony Earnshaw)
Such is the case with Bertha Mason, the violently insane “madwoman in the attic” and first wife of Edward Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre.” Jean Rhys comes to Bertha’s rescue in “Wide Sargasso Sea.” The novel is told from the point of view of the “madwoman” herself, who, in Rhys’ retelling, is born Antoinette Cosway in Jamaica before Rochester renames her Bertha.The dark, brooding Rochester is reimagined as a chronically unfaithful and emotionally abusive husband who locks his wife in the attic and hides her from the world. The book is decidedly feminist and anti-colonial — Rochester rejects “Bertha” in part due to her Creole heritage, hastening her descent into madness. Sort of puts Jane in a whole new light. (Barbara Lane)
4. "Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush is inspired by the tragic love story of Heathcliff and Cathy in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.KateBushMusic / Thomas Cautley Newby / Via youtube.com / amazon.comBush captures the same angst and heartache as Brontë did more than a century before her. She tells the love story from Cathy's perspective and even utilizes real lines from the novel throughout her lyrics! "Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy. I've come home, I'm so cold. Let me in your window." (Kat Pickhardt)
Landscapes of Realism
Rethinking literary realism in comparative perspectives
Volume I: Mapping realism
Edited by Dirk Göttsche, Rosa Mucignat and Robert WeningerJohn Benjamins Publishing CompanyISBN: 9789027208064April 2021Few literary phenomena are as elusive and yet as persistent as realism. While it responds to the perennial impulse to use literature to reflect on experience, it also designates a specific set of literary and artistic practices that emerged in response to Western modernity. Landscapes of Realism is a two-volume collaborative interdisciplinary exploration of this vast territory, bringing together leading-edge new criticism on the realist paradigms that were first articulated in nineteenth-century Europe but have since gone on globally to transform the literary landscape. Tracing the manifold ways in which these paradigms are developed, discussed and contested across time, space, cultures and media, this first volume tackles in its five core essays and twenty-five case studies such questions as why realism emerged when it did, why and how it developed such a transformative dynamic across languages, to what extent realist poetics remain central to art and popular culture after 1900, and how generally to reassess realism from a twenty-first-century comparative perspective.
Realism and translation. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre for an Austro-Hungarian minority and beyond by Tatjana JukićDrawing on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), I first show how the Victorian novel processes translation out of the narrative in order to espouse the metonymic imperative of realism. While this may be how the relation of realism and translation is decided in the Victorian novel, I argue that the subsequent history of translation of Brontë’s novel remains inflected in this relation. Taking Croatian translations of Jane Eyre as a case study, I analyze the ways in which they remain predicated on the metonymic imperative of realism, first in Austria-Hungary, when metonymy on these terms was adopted by Austro-Hungarian minorities as a vehicle of modern self-definition, and then in a process that survives the historical Austria-Hungary well into the twentieth century, in Yugoslav modernity for instance. What these translations ultimately sustain, and reveal, is radical realism: not a poetics so much as an apparatus instrumental to negotiating the modern condition in the past two centuries.
The Telegraph publishes disturbing news:
The views which inspired Wuthering Heights face being "completely destroyed" by a 150-home development, the expert behind a Brontë County tourism drive has said.The rolling hills outside Bradford, west Yorkshire have been unchanged for centuries and now form the gateway to the Brontë Way, a trail through the rugged landscape where the novelist sisters played as children and later used as motivational walks for their novels.The walk was revamped only three years ago when author Michael Stewart created the Brontë Stones Walk, a nine-mile hike which takes visitors from Thornton, where the Brontës were born, to their famous parsonage at Haworth, now a museum.At the start of the walk visitors emerge into three meadows with breathtaking views of the moors that featured in the novels Wuthering Heights, Jane Eye, and Shirley.But under plans proposed by Bradford council, part of the walk would become a site for 150 new homes, a mixture of council and private housing.Mr Stewart, 50, said: “The view will be completely destroyed. Instead of walking across beautiful fields with unspoiled views of the valley beyond you will be walking in the shadow of walls, fences, and the backs of houses.“It is very odd because there are council signs everywhere saying 'Brontë Country', so even entertaining the idea does not make any sense.“This will be devastating not just for the culture of Bradford but the economy as well.” (...)Nearby properties include Wycoller Hall (Ferndean Manor in Jane Eyre), Haworth Parsonage, where the Brontë family lived, which is now the Brontë Museum, and Oakwell Hall (Fieldhead in Shirley).Also affected will be the moors at Top Withins (Wuthering Heights), and the hills to the Spen Valley (Shirley country).Planning documents published by Bradford council say: "The Brontë Way, which is a draw for tourists and has high cultural significance, passes through the centre of this space."A sensitive site design which incorporates green infrastructure will be required to mitigate any impact on the Brontë Way, green infrastructure corridor and the wider landscape."Thornton is earmarked as one of the council's "Local Growth Centres", meaning it is expected to make a "a significant contribution" to meeting housing targets, the planning documents state.In total 575 new homes are planned, in cluding some on former green belt land, the plans reveal. A consultation closed at the end of last month. (Olivia Rudgard)
The Daily Mail includes the following map (you can check the council's local plan here) and adds:
If the Local Plan is approved, the 150 houses could be built within six years according to Bradford Council which admitted: 'Development at this large, open Green Field site has the potential to adversely alter the setting of these sensitive heritage assets.
'The site consists of a large open space on a hillside. The Brontë Way, which is a draw for tourists and has high cultural significance, passes through the centre of this space.
'A sensitive site design, which incorporates green infrastructure will be required to mitigate any impact on the Brontë Way.'
But Steve Stanworth, founder of Thornton's Brontë Birthplace Trust, said: 'It should be a nonstarter. They just don't understand the history. People are up in arms. It is nonsense.' (William Cole)
Also in The Daily Express, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Times, ActuaLitté (France), La Repubblica (Italy)...
Even chillier is Wuthering Heights, Arnold’s 2011 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s tormented romantic saga set on the Yorkshire moors. Misidentified on release as an unconventional take on a classic, with particular focus going to Arnold’s decision to cast the mixed-race James Howson as Heathcliff (a character plainly depicted as ethnically ambiguous in Brontë’s novel), the film actually looks like one of the more faithful interpretations.If Cathy (Kaya Scodelario) and Heathcliff remain curiously somewhat at a distance throughout, Arnold’s film at least matches the desolate poetry of Brontë’s prose. The director’s usual urban cacophony is replaced by a remorseless soundtrack of wind and rain, and Robbie Ryan’s ever-searching camera roams an endless, untamed wilderness. (Brogan Morris)
Daddy Long LegsBased on the classic novel which inspired the 1955 movie starring Fred Astaire-a beloved tale in the spirit of Jane Austen, the Brontë Sisters, and "Downton Abbey"-this heartwarming Cinderella story about a witty and winsome young woman and her mysterious benefactor has charmed audiences of all ages from Los Angeles to London. (Sarah Jay Leiber)
He also quoted beautiful lines of British novelist Emily Brontë on the occasion of their first wedding anniversary. "Whatever our souls are made of...her and mine are the same" - Emily Brontë.
In September, things changed. As the bars opened, I downloaded Tinder and began swiping. A few weeks in, I met an attractive writer who made me laugh over Jane Eyre jokes. We started going for drinks, dinners (all with a 10pm curfew) and, by the November lockdown, he popped the only question that matters in a pandemic, asking me to be in his bubble. (Rhadika Sanghani)
Del resto, vi sono state diverse opere artistiche e letterarie che hanno denunciato la condizione degli orfani a cavallo tra il XIX e l’inizio del XX secolo, basti pensare all’ Oliver Twist di Charles Dickens o alla Jane Eyre di Charlotte Bronte. (tiara) (Translation)
AnneBrontë.org celebrates Easter with the Brontës.
More scholar research on Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre:
Anna Anganita Theresia LatumetenPrologue: Journal on Language and Literature, 7(1 - March), 1–9, 2021This paper focuses on the depictions of the mad woman figure in two novels, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Using comparative literature, both texts are seen in the light of woman’s resistance as depicted by the characters “Bertha Mason” and “Antoinette Cosway” from Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, respectively. The novels used in this descriptive study are the primary texts. The findings show how Wide Sargasso Sea shows woman’s resistance when being compared to Jane Eyre, giving the mad woman character a voice on her own and showing an attempt to free herself from the forms of domination she experiences.
Doris Lessing compared this 1883 novel to Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. (Henry Eliot)
Elise Dumpleton: Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!B.N.: Jane Eyre. I hated reading until I found this book in my elementary school library, and it’s the one I’ve reflected on the most, probably because it’s what I used as an example when I finally realized I wanted to be a writer. My first book, Of Noble Birth, published by HarperCollins in November of 1999, was also an English historical, so you can see the inspiration. 😉
[Lavie] Tildhar places the action in 1902 London, so a number of characters have to be updated from their 19th century origins to fit the new era. For example, our narrator (and reader POV) is Jane Eyre — but she is no longer the independent-minded governess she was in her eponymous 1847 novel, but instead an even more capable character, a former battlefield medic who served in the Boer War. (Captain Comics)
“During my 27 years at the bench, I had a desire to close down orphanages which are now called children’s homes. Most of them reminded me of Jane Eyre and Oliver Twist,” said Justice Khema Swarnadhipathi.She noted that a resolution has now been adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, setting out the guidelines for the alternative care of children. “The Cabinet of Ministers of the Parliament of Sri Lanka approved an alternative care policy in 2019. It is for us judges and lawyers either to give life to these policies or treat them as a Pandora’s box,” she pointed out. (Ranjith Padmasiri)
Saskia Schultheis, Andreas-Gemeinde: Wer keine Schmonzetten mag, sollte sich von Saskia Schultheis' Buchtipp nicht abschrecken lassen: Sie empfiehlt „Jane Eyre“ von Charlotte Brontë. „Das ist zwar eine Liebesgeschichte, aber nicht kitsch-kitsch“, sagt sie. Stattdessen gebe es Charaktere mit Ecken und Kanten, Menschen, die sehr viel mitgemacht haben, in ihrem Leben. „Der männliche Protagonist ist sogar alles andere als ein Sympath - übellaunig, ruppig, genervt, aber mit einem unterschwelligen Charme.“ Der Roman bekommt von ihr das Prädikat: super gut lesbar. (Simon Wilke) (Translation)
De repente tenemos historias sobre Charlotte Brontë o Jane Austen que han ocultado su sexo, se dice por ahí que muchas canciones de Atahualpa Yupanqui las ha escrito una mujer que firmaba como hombre y eso pasaba porque sino tu arte no iba, no tenía por dónde ir si no eras hombre. (Interview by Adrián Mouján in Télam) (Translation)
Σπύρος Πετρουνάκος: Ναι, υπάρχει σύγχρονη «γυναικεία γραφή».Odile Bréhier: Και ομολογώ πως ούτε τα θέματα τους, ούτε το είδος της γραφής τους με συγκινούν. Κατά τ’ άλλα, υπάρχουν βεβαίως «γυναικείες γραφές» που μπορεί και να συγκινούν, όπως των Jane Austen, αφών Brontë, Virginia Woolf, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Agatha Christie, Daphné du Maurier, Doris Lessing, Marguerite Duras, Françoise Sagan, Joyce (Translation)
Hvilken bog eller hvilket blad har givet dig en god oplevelse?K.J.: Åh, der er mange! Emily Brontës ”Wuthering Heights” har jeg læst et utal af gange. (Translation)
“Como en Cumbres Borrascosas y como en Los Pazos de Ulloa, había que situar la acción en un lugar apartado, con sus reglas propias, con una jerarquía totalmente patriarcal donde se desarrollan comportamientos humanos asalvajados; le propuse a José Luis que eso hoy día podía localizarse en una rave en un descampado, con esa idea de tiempo suspendido. Estuvimos de acuerdo desde el principio”. (Rafa Ruiz) (Translation)
Diario de Ibiza (Spain) recommends Glass Town by Isabel Greenberg.
Jung-Suk HwangCritique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2021.1887073Published online: 29 Mar 2021
Antoinette Cosway Mason in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), whom her English husband later calls Bertha—the name of a mad white Creole woman in Jane Eyre—has been a focus of discussion of Rhys’s novel, particularly regarding her madness and its implications of feminism and (post)colonialism. However, although largely neglected, depicting the post-emancipation British West Indies around the 1830s, Rhys represents various forms of physical and mental symptoms of madness, expressed not just by the white Creole woman but also by two important groups—white male colonizers and African Caribbeans. By focusing on the under-examined symptoms of madness, I will analyze how they reveal changing socioeconomic systems and the continuity of exploitation after emancipation. This reading also suggests how Rhys’s novel about the 1830s West Indies reflects her own madness/anger about her contemporary post-colonial world of the mid-twentieth century.
